"Contrary to what some people seem to believe,
simple writing is not the product of simple minds. A simple, unpretentious
style has both grace and power. By not calling attention to itself, it allows
the reader to focus on the message"--Richard Lederer and Richards Dowis,
Sleeping Dogs Don't Lay, 1999. More Words of
Wisdom

Apocrypha: "Let thy speech be short,
comprehending much in a few words.'"

Christopher Buckley: "The best advice on
writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for
every word you can cut.'"

Truman Capote: "I believe more in the
scissors than I do in the pencil."

Rachel Carson: "[Writing is] largely a
matter of application and hard work, or writing and rewriting endlessly until
you are satisfied that you have said what you want to say as clearly and simply
as possible."

Winston Churchill: "Broadly speaking, the
short words are the best, and the old words when short are best of
all."

Cicero: "When you wish to instruct, be
brief; that men's minds take in quickly what you say, learn its lesson, and
retain it faithfully. Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side
of a brimming mind."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: "Words in prose
ought to express the intended meaning; if they attract attention to themselves,
it is a fault; in the very best styles you read page after page without
noticing the medium."

Albert Einstein: "Most of the fundamental
ideas of science are essentially simple, and may, as a rule, be expressed in
language comprehensible to everyone."

Albert Einstein: "Any fool can make things
bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius--and a lot
of courage--to move in the opposite direction."

George Eliot: "The finest language is
mostly made up of simple unimposing words."

Wilson Follett: "Whenever we can make 25
words do the work of 50, we halve the area in which looseness and
disorganization can flourish."

H.W. Fowler: "Any one who wishes to become
a good writer should endeavour, before he allows himself to be tempted by the
more showy qualities, to be direct, simple, brief, vigorous, and
lucid."

Anatole France: "The finest words in the
world are only vain sounds if you can't understand them."

Anatole France: "The best sentence? The
shortest."

Learned Hand: "The language of law must not
be foreign to the ears of those who are to obey it."

Robert Heinlein: "The most important lesson
in the writing trade is that any manuscript is improved if you cut away the
fat."

Hippocrates: "The chief virtue that
language can have is clearness, and nothing detracts from it so much as the use
of unfamiliar words."

Thomas Jefferson: "The most valuable of all
talents is that of never using two words when one will do."

Samuel Johnson: "Do not accustom yourself
to use big words for little matters."

Samuel Johnson: "A man who uses a great
many words to express his meaning is like a bad marksman who instead of aiming
a single stone at an object takes up a handful and throws at it in hopes he may
hit."

Joseph Joubert: "Words, like glasses,
obscure everything they do not make clear."

James J. Kilpatrick: "Use familiar
words--words that your readers will understand, and not words they will have to
look up. No advice is more elementary, and no advice is more difficult to
accept. When we feel an impulse to use a marvelously exotic word, let us lie
down until the impulse goes away."

C.S. Lewis: "Don't use words too big
for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean
'very'; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk
about something really infinite."

John Locke: "Vague forms of speech have so
long passed for mysteries of science; and hard words mistaken for deep
learning, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak or those
who hear them, that they are but a hindrance to true knowledge."

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: "Many a poem is
marred by a superfluous word."

W. Somerset Maugham: "The secret of
play-writing can be given in two maxims: stick to the point, and, whenever you
can, cut."

George Orwell: "The great enemy of clear
language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and
one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and
exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink."

Blaise Pascal: "The letter I have written
today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it
shorter."

William Penn: "Speak properly, and in as
few words as you can, but always plainly; for the end of speech is not
ostentation, but to be understood."

Alexander Pope: "Words are like leaves; and
where they most abound, Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found."

Beatrix Potter: "The shorter and the
plainer the better."

Will Rogers: "I love words but I don't
like strange ones. You don't understand them and they don't understand
you. Old words is like old friends, you know 'em the minute you see
'em."

William Safire: "It behooves us to avoid
archaisms. Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do."

William Shakespeare: "Men of few words are
the best men."

William Strunk: "A sentence should contain
no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason
that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary
parts."

Mark Twain: "I never write
metropolis for seven cents when I can get the same price for
city. I never write policeman when I can get the same money
for cop."

Mark Twain: "As to the adjective, when in
doubt, strike it out."

Mark Twain: "Anybody can have ideas--the
difficulty is to express them without squandering a quire of paper on an idea
that ought to be reduced to one glittering paragraph."

E.B. White: "Use the smallest word that
does the job."

William Butler Yeats: "Think like a wise
man but communicate in the language of the people."

William Zinsser: "Writing improves in
direct ratio to the things we can keep out of it that shouldn't be
there."

Copyright 2015. Maintained by Gary B.
Larson of Seattle, Washington, garbltoo@gmail.com. Please understand that
if I respond to your questions about writing, I may not respond quickly enough
to meet your deadline. (If you're wondering, I've never been a
cartoonist.)

Updated Feb. 1, 2015. Whatever their acclaim and position, all
writers need editors. I don't have one for Garbl's Concise Writing
Guide, so if you spot a typo, unclear message, bad link or possible error,
please let me know.